One Last Try
by thejennamonster
Summary: END OF HIATUS. PART THREE UP. "Dib, please explain to me why you killed him."
1. Conversation

A/n: Yes, I know that I should be working on the next chapter of YOLT or even GDB, but this popped into my head and I wanted to get it out. It's a one shot.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own IZ. I do, however, own one heck of a headache…owwww…

One Last Try.

"Dib, please explain to me why you killed him."

"He was an alien. He wanted to destroy the world. I had to—"

"An alien?"

"Yes! Look, I know it sounds crazy and that you don't believe me, but it's true! He was an alien. He was of the Irken race. Didn't you notice his green skin? His lack of nose and ears?"

"The records show that it was a skin condition."

"A skin condition that left him without a _nose_? Come on! You're a doctor! How can you believe that? What skin condition in the world makes it so you don't have a nose?!"

"Leprosy."

"You're kidding."

"I am, but that's not the point. The point is that you killed him, Dib. Alien or not, conspiracy theory or not, you're in here for that reason. It's my job to determine what your motivation was. I know how intelligent you are, and I know that you're not really crazy, and I would hate to put on your charts that you murdered Zim because of a delusion. So, please, tell me the real reason."

"I _am_ telling you the real reason! He was an alien! The fate of the_ world _was at stake!"

"I want you to look at this, Dib. This is the autopsy report on Zim. Read it to me."

"Subject appears to have been stabbed three times in the chest and another three times in the back. Severe trauma to the lungs and…wait a minute…Zim didn't _have_ lungs! His entire body was run by one organ! His squeegaly-spooch! He didn't have any lungs or normal human organs—"

"But he would have if he were human, would he not?"

"But he _wasn't_ human! That's the point!"

"Then why does the autopsy report state that he was? It's all there in front of you, Dib, in black and white. All you have to do is see it. I know you can, just _look_!"

"No! I'm not going to believe these lies!"

"Lies? Scientific data are _lies_? Damn it, Dib, I'm trying to _help_ you here! Do you know how hard it was to convince the judge to let me handle your case? Legally, I'm not supposed to even be here, in case of some sort of bias. I'm risking my license here; risking my career and my reputation to try and help you, and you say that I'm presenting you with lies?!"

"Why are you even bothering, then, if it was just a pain in the ass for you?!"

"Because I don't want you to disappear! I don't want you to be locked up in some institution and forcefully medicated! I want you to be at home, safe, and sane."

"I am sane."

"Then prove it: why did you kill Zim?"

"Damn it, I _told_ you, already: he was an alien! _An alien!_ He was going to—"

"No! Stop, just forget it. I'm tired of listening to this. I've spend god knows how long listening to your rants about how he was an alien bent on world destruction when you know just as well as I do that even if he were, he wasn't smart enough to carry through with it. If you're not going to tell me the truth then there's nothing I can do to help you. I'm sorry, Dib. My report is going to show that you are experiencing delusions and possible schizophrenic tendencies. I'll see you in the courtroom, tomorrow. I'm sorry."

"Gaz, wait!"

"What?"

"Thank you for trying. If I could tell you what you want to hear, you know that I would."

"I know. Goodbye, Dib."

"Goodbye."

--

Yeah, I know, it doesn't make much sense…or does it. I don't know. It's fun to procrastinate when I should be studying.

I'm wondering if this scene plays out in everyone else's head the same way it did mine. With there being no character direction or written emotion, is it still effective? Hmmm…

R and R, please.

-j


	2. Gaz

A.n: Ok, so I said that this was going to be a one shot, but I ended up having a few ideas float around my head, and since my Wonderful Reviewers had some questions, mainly centering around the whole "Zim had lungs" thing, I decided to continue it.

Thank you do much to everyone who reviewed. You are all awesome. Totally. Dude.

DISCLAIMER: These things are annoying. I know that I don't own IZ; You know that I don't own IZ, so what's the point?

One Last Try

PART TWO: Gaz.

"Damn him! Damn his stubbornness, damn his stupid big head, damn his inability to see when someone is trying to _help_ him for a change!" I muttered, kicking the side of my desk before throwing myself into my chair. The pointed toe of my heel made a dent. I didn't care. I propped both elbows on the desktop, cradling my head between my fists.

"I take it that things didn't go so well with your brother?" my secretary, Paul, asked, his tall, slender body leaning on the doorway. I glared at him through the hair that had fallen into my face. He smirked at the look that, when I was a kid, would have sent a man his size running for the hills. "Guess that's a no."

"I don't understand him, Paul." I stated, lifting my head and kicking back in my chair, "I'm giving him a way out! All he has to do is admit that Zim was human and he'll get out of that goddamned Insanity plea. A few years in prison is nothing compared to the rest of his life stuck locked up in here."

Paul pushed himself off the doorway and slid across the room towards my desk. That was how he moved—he slid, floated, slinked. He moved like a predator, a lion stalking his prey. His thin frame and sharp features reminded me of a knife. He made himself comfortable in one of the chairs situated on the other side of my desk.

"You know, if he's so insistent on this whole 'alien' thing, maybe being in here is what he needs." he offered.

I gave him another of my patented death glares, "My brother is not crazy, Paul," I informed him, my voice low, dangerous, "he's just confused, that's all.

"He must be pretty damned confused to think that the guy he killed had a…what was it called?" He grabbed a report from my desk, scanning it over, "Speelysnooch?"

"Squeegaly-spooch." I corrected, snatching the paper from his hand, "He thinks that Zim was an alien and his bodily functions were controlled by an all encompassing organ called a squeegaly-spooch."

"Yeah, that's it. Man, where did he come _up_ with something like that."

"He always had a wild imagination." I answered, my eyes downcast.

"Obviously." Paul scoffed, "And he won't believe otherwise, even though you've shown him the documents from the coroner?"

I shook my head in the negative, a small twinge of guilt forming in my stomach. I knew why Dib wouldn't listen to the documentation—it was because he knew just as well as I did that the information on them was false. He knew because he had studied what Zim was for most of this life, and I knew because I had bribed and blackmailed the coroner into writing the report that I now held in my hands. It was amazing what a few hundred dollars and proof of postmortem sexual intercourse reported from more than one body coming out of his lab could do. The city coroner would know next time to at least wear a condom. The thing that got me the most is that my "blackmail" was all a rouse—I didn't know that the guy had an unethical fetish for cold flesh, I had just made a lucky guess. Nothing like a guilty conscience ripe for exploitation.

"So what are you going to do, now? The trial is tomorrow."

I shrugged, sighing, "I guess I just have to write up the report saying that he's mentally incompetent and unfit to be a part of society. He'll be convicted, tomorrow, and be stuck in one of these little padded rooms for the rest of his life." I pounded my fist on the desk, causing the lamp and my collection of random nick-knacks to shake. A picture fell over. I sighed again.

"I still think that, no matter how much you want to deny it, he's still insane. I mean—"

I cut him off with a glare as I felt a familiar heat rise within me—a violent anger that not even the 250mgs of mood stabilizers I had been on since I was 13 could control.

"Paul, don't you have something you should be typing?" I asked, my voice low and barely controlled.

He gave me a frustrated look, but got the hint, and rose fluidly out of his chair. "Yeah, sure boss, whatever." He replied, stalking from the room. I could have sworn I heard him muttering something about psychologists being as crazy as their patients, but I chose to ignore it.

Once he had left, closing my door behind him, did I let the full extent of my emotion towards the situation show. I had never been a crier, but I allowed one hot, frustrated tear slide down my cheek and plop onto my desk, staining the leather blotter a darker brown. Picking up the picture that had fallen over, I righted it, staring at the smiling faces contained within the glass. The picture was of Dib and I at my graduation. His arm was around my shoulders, a proud and silly smile on his face as I glared at the camera from beneath my cap. I lightly touched the glass over his face, and then let out a heavy breath through my nose, mental chastising myself for being so sentimental.

But damn it, why did he have to be to _stubborn_?

"_Must be a family trait"_ a voice answered from the back of my mind. I groaned and ran my hands over my face.

"I thought that I had drugged you out of my head." I muttered to the air.

"_Psh. It will take more than a few hundred mgs of chemicals to stifle your conscience. You should know this by now."_ the voice answered, seemingly closer. I moved my hands away from my face and glared at the figure that had materialized in the chair across from my desk. Where Paul had been sitting moments before was now occupied by a boy of about twelve with scythe-like hair and glasses. He wore a long black trench coat that looked a few sized too big. A giant, goofy, shit-eating grin was on his face.

"You are not my conscience." I growled.

"_Aren't I?"_ the figure asked, still grinning madly.

"No. You are a manifestation of my stress surrounding my bother's obvious mental instability. You are a delusion, nothing else, except perhaps an indication that I should up the dosage on my meds." I stood, stalking over to one of my bookshelves, turning my back to the figure. If I didn't seem him, he wasn't there.

"_You're doing the wrong thing, you know."_ the figure stated.

I rolled my eyes, running my finger over the spines of the books, "The wrong thing with what?"

"_With your brother."_

Finding what I was looking for, I pulled it from the shelf and then turned back towards my desk. "How so?"

The figure shrugged, _"You're trying to make him lie."_ He leaned back in the chair, propping his feet up onto my desk, _"What you should be doing is making _yourself_ tell the truth."_

I glared at him, and sat back down in my chair, slamming the book onto the desktop. "Really? And what truth would _that_ be, now?"

"_That Zim was really an alien bent on world destruction."_

"And get myself thrown in here, as well? No thanks. I enjoy my reputation of being the 'sanest' member of the Membrane family." I opened the book, flipping through it to the page that I wanted.

"_You won't get locked up if you have _proof_, now would you?"_

I slammed the book back shut, my annoyance that my 'conscience's' persistence more pressing than my need for research, "After I went through so much effort to prove that Zim _wasn't_ an alien, you want me to dig up proof that he _was_?"

He nodded, the grin still splayed across his face, his eyes full of youthful excitement.

"And, and this is just hypothetically speaking, now, if I _were_ to listen to you—where would I find this 'proof' you speak of. I can't use Dib's research—he's the one that has been deemed insane."

"_His base is still there, isn't it?"_

I opened my mouth to counter, but then closed it immediately. The figure took this as an admission of the positive.

"_And if his base is still there, then that would mean that…"_

"His labs are still there, too. As is the Voot Cruiser…" I finished.

"_Exactly."_ He stated, looking smug the way a cat does. _"Think about it, Gaz: you find the proof that is needed to show that Zim was an alien and, not only will Dib be kept out of an asylum, but he will probably be acquitted as well. Hell, he might even be considered a hero—saving the world from an alien menace and all that"_

"You would enjoy that, wouldn't you." I asked, sarcastically.

The figure shrugged. _"I think that, after everything, you at least owe him this much. He's spent the last 15 years since Zim came to earth being considered completely insane. Give him this vindication, will ya? He's already saved the world a hundred times over, I think that it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to save his soul."_

"The trial is tomorrow." I stated, thinking that as a way to end the discussion.

"_Then I guess you should get going, then, shouldn't you?"_the apparition countered.

I sighed, defeated, and stood, reaching for my coat. "I hate it when you make sense, and pull the whole guilt thing on me, you know that?"

"_I wouldn't do it if it wouldn't work so well."_ the figure answered, fading from his spot in the chair. _"Good luck, Gaz. And don't look so pissed. You're a Membrane. Saving the world is what we're here, for, remember?"_

I shook my head, irritated. "I hate you." I muttered, as I opened the door to my office and set out towards my car.

-

A/n: OK, so that's it for now. Hopefully that explains a bit more and answers some questions from the first chapter. I seem to have inadvertently started a bit of a saga, here. I'm gonna try and update this as quickly as possible, but YOLT has first call when it comes to updating, so it may not be as quick as one would like.

R and R people, lemme know that continuing this is a good move on my part. :)

-j


	3. Apology

Dear faithful readers,

I'm writing this note to inform you that this story is on hiatus until further notice. It may not even be updated again, period, as far as I know. As much as I enjoy the plot that I was starting to weave, and as much as I enjoy the idea of Gaz fighting for Dib, I really just can't continue at this point. The themes within this—the fact that Dib is in a mental institution being the main one—are just too much for me to handle right now. In real life a person who I have considered a very good friend of mine has…broken. He was institutionalized at the beginning of the year and came home supposedly "better" a few weeks ago. Tonight I witnessed just how not better he is, and after spending almost two hours listening to the incoherent ramblings of someone I care greatly about, I really just don't think that I can continue this. It hits too close to home at the moment.

I may change my mind after a few weeks, or even days. All I know is that I've spent the past half hour staring at a blank page and just the thought of writing anything that has to do with insanity or theories that no one else understands…seeing things no one else sees…I just can't do it. I'm sorry.

I wish that I could be the person that I am writing Gaz to be. I wish I could find the evidence that proves everything that my friend is speaking of. However, there is no way that I can prove that six is a prime number, nor is there a way that I can fix the coding in the program that he's writing so that it breaks Microsoft or whatever the hell he's trying to do, or convince him that, if the program crashes than it is impossible. I just can't. Either he's blind to the world, or the world is blind to him, but either way, I can't fix anything. And writing about someone who can just makes me feel even worse and even more helpless.

So I'm sorry, dear readers. I'm still going to update YOLT as regularly as I have and all that, but this story has to lie in wait for now.

Sincerely,

-j


	4. Dib

A/n: So here I am, once again.

I thanked everyone in the A/n of YOLT, but I will do it here, as well: thank you all so much for your thoughts/patience. My friend is doing much, much better, and has calmed down, dramatically. (Thank god.) I thank you all for your understanding as to why I couldn't continue this fic at that time. I don't deserve such awesome readers. :)

As for everyone pointing out that I spell "squeegaly-spooch" wrong…eh…does it really matter? I know that for canon purposes it does, and I thank you guys for pointing out my error, but I really couldn't find a "proper" spelling for it, anywhere. For the sake of continuity, if the word shows up in any other part of the fic, it will be spelled the same way I've been spelling it. So just, I guess, let this little note let you guys know that now I Know that I'm spelling it wrong, but am doing so on Purpose, because I'm a Lazy, Lazy Jennamonster and don't feel like going back and fixing it in the other chapters and hates continuity errors. /rant-type-thing.

Whee.

DISLAIMER: I own….well, not Zim, I can tell you that. Damnit.

One Last Try

PART THREE: Dib.

I'm not crazy, you know. Well, I suppose I am, a little, or else I wouldn't have spent the past however many years chasing after some stupid green kid that showed up in my sixth grade classroom. I mean, really, how dumb is it to think that someone is an alien, just because his skin is a different colour; a colour that doesn't really exist outside of the normal spectrum of Human skin colours…and there was that whole lack of nose and ears, and it was a Skin Condition. I knew that that was the reasoning, why could I never really believe it? Oh, yeah, because I'm—

No, Dib. No. Stop. Breath. It's the drugs. And the therapy. The Rapy. Haha. The Rapist. My sister is now a rapist. This is funny to me because of the way that she was when we were kids, before she got on the drugs that made her think before hitting me. The Rapist. My childhood raped because our mother died and I was left in charge. The Man of the House. The Man. Haha. I wonder where my dad is? The Real man. The man who brought home the bacon while his son fried in the skillet of humanity, the grease upon which social deviation was prepared and why am I thinking like this? What kind of bad beatnik poetry are these thoughts making my drugs into?

Why I am here, again? What was I—

Zim. The trial and Zim. I killed Zim. He was an alien, you know. Green skin. No ears. No nose, although he used to go on and on about the STINK of humanity. How was he able to smell without a nose?

Antenna. Like a bug. A big, green bug. I don't like bugs, you know. They crawl in here at night, trying to force their way into my ears so that they can lay eggs in my brain. Eggs that will explode into thoughts about how I am NOT CRAZY, I'M NOT! WHY AM I IN HERE? WHY CAN'T I GO HOME, I JUST WANT TO—

I just want to eat grubs?

No. That was the Bigfoot baby.

Bigfoot doesn't really exist, you know. I had a Real Paranormal Investigator tell me that. Bigfoot is a lie. A hoax. Like aliens. Wait. No. Aliens are real. Aliens are—

Count Cocofang and Chickenfoot like to use my belt sander.

No, that was Big—

Doesn't exist. Nothing exists. This room is all I've known for so long. These four walls, that little window, that square of light which doesn't exist. The light is imaginary, you know. Like my friend from elementary school. I had a friend, then. Except he really wasn't my friend. We used to fight and scream at each other, and hit each other with muffins and water balloons. He was allergic to water. That wasn't very nice of me, to throw water at him when he was allergic. I should apologize.

He's dead, now.

I didn't mean to hurt him, I didn't really want to, but I had to. The fate of humanity, the fate of the World was at stake. He was going crazy. He was insane. I'm not, though. I'm normal. I'm fine except for these STUPID DRUGS and INJECTIONS that they keep giving me to make me Relax and sleep, but I can't relax knowing that any minute they're going to come in here, to my room with the four walls and imaginary window and turn me over and stab me in the ass with that needle and that cold, cold liquid that shines green in the imaginary light…the colour green doesn't exist, you know. We only see it because that is what the light wants us to see. But the light isn't there, either. It's imaginary. Like my dead friend.

My poor dead friend.

I want my Mommy.

Mommy, he made me do it, Mommy. I'm not bad. I don't mean to be bad. He told me to do it. Told me that if I didn't, he was going to do something Bad to the world. His leaders had changed his programming without him knowing it. His base was dangerous, his pet was insane. Those tall people, those adult people, tall, tall, tall, they told him "You need to do something or die. Kill the world or die. If you can't do it, we will make you, we own you, your personality is ours for reprogramming. We will make you Useful."

And he kept jerking like a puppet, his arms and legs flailing, moving, and he was screaming and it hurt and he told me to do it. That he would hurt me if I didn't, that if I didn't he would hurt me and my sister and the world and I needed to do it, JUST DO IT DIB, JUST DO IT, JUST—

And the blade went in the front and everything went gray, and my stomach hurt and I threw up. I didn't mean to. I couldn't help it. And he looked at me and said, "The back, Dib, you have to do the back, that is where I am, that is where I—"

And the knife went in and out and in and my arms were shaking and I could smell burnt hair and something was hurting me and I screamed and he screamed and there was screaming, screaming, screaming, scream—

They put me in a room and took away my shoelaces and then The Rapist came and she was my sister, the person who stole my childhood, what a perfect job for her, the rapist, the abuser, the queen of 250 mg of behavioral drugs that get stabbed into my ass on a regular basis to keep me relaxed and my mind cloudy, and I just want to go home and look at the stars.

Do you think that the stars are real? That there is anything outside of these walls, these four walls, this prison, this room, this womb, this—

I'm not crazy, you know.

oooOOOooo

A/n: So, if anyone understands that random stream of conciousness, they get mad props. Dib, as you can tell, is on a lot of meds, that are prolly making him worse than he already is. Whoops. Sorry, Dib.

The next chapter will go back to Gaz being completely out of character and Helping her poor institutionalized brother and finding out some of the reasons behind Zim's death. I just wanted to touch a bit on Dib's mental state, here.

R and R, people. Thank you. :)

j


End file.
